The use of touch-sensitive surfaces as input devices for computers and other electronic computing devices has increased significantly in recent years. Exemplary touch-sensitive surfaces include touch pads and touch screen displays. Such surfaces are widely used to review and edit electronic documents by manipulating a cursor within the electronic document presented on a display. These electronic documents are viewed or edited within applications having viewing and editing capabilities (e.g., drawing applications, presentation applications (e.g., Apple's KEYNOTE, or Microsoft's POWERPOINT), word processing applications (e.g., Apple's PAGES or Microsoft's WORD), website creation applications, spreadsheet applications (e.g., Apple's NUMBERS or Microsoft's EXCEL)).
Conventional cursor manipulation methods that require the use of a mouse, or other peripheral input mechanism, are relatively inefficient as they require the user to move one hand away from the keyboard to the mouse in order to make the selection. Similarly, conventional user interfaces provided on touch screen displays do not provide a simple and intuitive way to manipulate the cursor for content selection and editing. As such, it is desirable to provide a more efficient means for manipulating a cursor displayed in an electronic document presented on a touch screen display.